Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorians Ancestors

by Jan Bondeson

This book makes use of a privately held archive of Illustrated Police News to describe strange, macabre, and uncanny episodes from the Victorian era. Dog-Faced Men are exhibited on stage; the doctors congregate around the bed of the Sleeping Frenchman of Soho; Miss Vint demonstrates her Reincarnated Cats; and scantily dressed Female Somnambulists tumble from the roofs. The White Gorilla takes a swig from its tankard of beer, eagles come swooping from the sky to carry off little children, and the Rat-Killing Monkey of Manchester goes on a rampage, . Each one of these tales is a window into an era that encapsulated public probity and private hysteria in the strangest of ways. 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Victorian, Historical

352 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2019

About the author

Outside of his career in medicine, he has written several nonfiction books on a variety of topics, such as medical anomalies and unsolved murder mysteries.

Bondeson is the biographer of a predecessor of Jack the Ripper, the London Monster, who stabbed fifty women in the buttocks, of Edward 'the Boy' Jones, who stalked Queen Victoria and stole her underwear, and Greyfriars Bobby, a Scottish terrier who supposedly spent 14 years guarding his master's grave.

He is currently working as a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at the Cardiff University School of Medicine.


(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

A collection of stories plucked from the pages of the Illustrated Police News, Victorian Britain's barrel-scraping tabloid rag. Lots of lovely illustrations and some truly bizarre stories. Miss Vint and her Reincarnated Cats, or the highly enthusiastic monkey trained to kill rats with a hammer, and of course a big up to Victor Noir. *niche joke*

You do have to turn off your 21st century sensibilities to read a lot of this because honestly, some of the stories are pretty horrible--you get some really ghastly murders and cruelty along with the amusing reincarnated cats, and a lot of human wreckage. Regarded with detachment rather than, er, decent civilised empathy *cough*, it's a mostly great read. I found the narrative style a bit tiresomely jocular at points--not overwhelmingly but enough for a few eye rolls. But, if you are into strange Victoriana, it does what it says on the tin very thoroughly indeed.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik hou meer van zijn thematische boeken waarin hij uitgebreider ingaat om de verhalen maar dit overzicht van wat er zoal in de Victoriaanse tabloid verscheen geeft wel veel inspiratie om verder te zoeken.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a delightful collection of strange and macabre stories from the infamous Victorian - Edwardian era paper the Illustrated Police News. If you ever were curious where tabloids really began, where they received their information, and just how long people have been hoarding animals... well, this is the book for you. Complete with some of the truly remarkable illustrations that gave this paper its name, Strange Victoriana is an interesting mix of the sensationalistic, forteana, lewd, and downright hilarious. It's a true politically incorrect look into the heart of working class Victoria England.



Often deemed bordering on pornographic, the detail put into these illustrations is still downright remarkable. Historians have been able to pore over this tabloid and reconstruct old architecture. In many cases, this newspaper is the only way we know what certain famous (or infamous) figures looked like. In other cases, animals have been able to be identified from the detailed drawings. It's a pretty cool look at what archivists go through and how much can be taken from inbetween the lines.



So, yes, this is a very fun book about a very odd period in time. It's a testament to the fact that the more things change the more things stay the same. People's tastes remain fairly predictable. Our popular culture now really isn't much different to what the Victorians loved. Funny how that stuff works.

[Mandelaeffects · Rating 3 out of 5]

the victorians were so strange lol

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

To say I've read this book is an exaggeration - I had only the vaguest idea of the books content when I got it through an interlibrary loan - and though there is enough oddity in the selection of items from the Victorian era publication 'Illustrated Police News' (anyone who has read books on Oscar Wilde or the Fanny & Stella case will have seen reproductions of its work covering those trials) to make for sporadically amusing reading that is about all the praise I can muster.

The authors habit of being 'amazed' at everything he finds in the Victorian yellow or gutter press and then using it to as the material for books in which he constantly harps on about how the Victorians were ahead of things and how slow we are in recognising the various ways they are so like us and unlike the clichéd Victorians we have been taught to despise. Of course the Victorians were not the clichéd figures of fun, but people have been rediscovering the Victorians since the 1920s. Authors who discover that the Victorians were into sex and violence and want us all to be surprised are not discovering something only revealing that they have never read any kind of book on 19th century Britain.

Also, and this is entirely my prejudice, I find it impossible to trust an author of any kind of historical narrative who writes for Fortean Times.

Honestly there are really good books out there on the oddities of Victorian England but this is not one of them.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange Victoriana, the first from my massive pile of Christmas swag, is an entertaining collection of the weird, wonderful, spooky, salacious, and sometimes downright macabre stories taken from the Illustrated Police News (IPN) – an immensely popular tabloid of the time (you’ll have seen some of its illustrations before, particularly if you’ve ever had any kind of interest in the Jack the Ripper case which the IPN went to town on).

Victorians are often thought of as incredibly repressed and prudish, while a quick peruse through these pages reflects a society that’s actually anything but – revelling in the stories of brutal crimes, society scandals, and downright gawking at anything out of the norm.

Inside you’ll find female sleepwalkers and daredevils, competitive shavers and fasters (I can’t imagine how bored you’d have to be to find someone fasting entertaining), a long parade of plonkers undertaking wagers inside lion’s cages, fighting ghosts, medical curiosities, animal hoarders, and many, many murders.

While noting that the IPN wasn’t above printing fabrications from across the world while also happily making up its own, the quality of its illustrations still stand out and bring some of Victorian society’s fascinations into sharper relief (they really liked an unconscious woman who they could draw in disarray).

There were some times at the beginning of the book when the author’s constant ‘in my books ‘Blah Blah’ and ‘Whatever’ I talked about…’ but thankfully they fell by the wayside quickly so we could concentrate on the stories instead, resulting in a book that is entertaining and easy to drop in and out of – would make for particularly great toilet reading!

**Also posted at Cannonball Read 12**

[T.G. Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've finished reading this book for now. It was given to me as a birthday present and I've really enjoyed what I've read so far. I usually read books on Kindle as I find the text of most print books too small/too light for me to read for longer than ten minutes. I soldiered on with this one because I really like the topic but I had to read it through a magnifying glass (while also wearing my magnified reading glasses). Needless to say, my wrist ached after a while. This is my only critique of the book. For those who enjoy the quirkier side of history, I'd recommend you read this volume. I enjoyed what I'd read and it even helped inspire a plot for one of my short stories.

[Sophie Constable · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about the 'strange' and 'weird' things that the Victorians were obsessed with and wrote about in their newspapers. This is a great little book to dip in and out of over a certain period of time which I really liked about it. I do think personally I would have liked a little bit of analysis as to what each case/story can tell us about Victorian society. However, that is not the point of the book and I do think that the book is exactly what it markets itself as. While I didn't completely love it, I do think that this is a book that lots of people will enjoy and I would recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the Victorian era.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mainly stories from the "illustrated police news": a tabloid from 1900s. Some of the stories were really good and some a bit dull and discriminatory. Liked the stories about ghosts the most and was interesting to hear about how people are the same now as they were then in terms of loving a bit of gossip

[Chantelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An lengthy and quite frankly boring introduction, but after that the stories were actually quite interesting and told in short enough form so that I didn't lose interest like I did with the intro. If you're like me, skip the beginning and get right into the nitty gritty, you won't have missed much other than a lengthy history and description of the IPN paper.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched and well presented with investigations into the stories along side the original illustrations.

Suffers from being a compilation album as theyl always be some chapters that won't interest everyone.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting but sometimes was hard to read

[Mark A Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent miscellany of weird Victoriana, drawn from the pages of the Illustrated Police News . While about half of the entries have previously been published in Fortean Times magazine, Bondeson expands the context and background of every story with his own research and analysis. His pithy personal comments spice the text, which is never dry, and very readable. Where else could you read of such gems as the hammer-welding "Rat Killing Monkey of Manchester", escaped polar bears, "The Fighting Ghost of Tondu", missing heirs, 'orrible murders, the pastime of whipping Salvation Army members, or the lifesaving skills of Newfoundland dogs ? Highly recommended for anyone interested in Victorian newspapers, sideshows, social history, or just for personal interest.